After-school molester gets 8 years

A Superior Court Judge has sentenced a former after-school volunteer who repeatedly molested a 10-year-old student to eight years in prison.

Richard Davila, 23, was a volunteer at Washington Elementary School in the PrimeTime program run by S.A.Y. San Diego.

He was sentenced on Thursday after the victim’s family read victim-impact statements in court.

“The thing before you has no right to live among us in society,” said the boy’s father, who the U-T is not identifying to protect the victim. “This thing before you is a predator, plain and simple.”

The sentence was part of a plea agreement agreed to by the victim’s family to spare the boy from having to relive his ordeal during a jury trial.

The victim’s father said that the boy now suffers from epileptic seizures and is in therapy to cope with the trauma of the molestations.

According to the mother’s statement, the boy asked if he could stay home from school one day and was told no.

“The look on my son’s face was a look of complete despair and helplessness,” the mother’s statement said.

She asked the boy if there was a bully at school or a big test. Finally, she looked at a picture Davila had drawn of the boy and a text message the man had sent her offering to tutor the boy for free on nights and weekends. She asked the boy if Davila had something to do with his anxiety.

Investigators would discover among Davila’s belongings a novel that graphically described a sexual relationship between a man and a boy and a laptop filled with child pornography. Davila faces separate federal charges in connection with the child pornography.

While Davila’s sentence will likely end in about six years, Judge Dwayne Moring told the family that the criminal justice system would safeguard the public from Davila, who will have to register as a sex offender for life and is subject to an indefinite stay in a state hospital if he is deemed a violent sexual offender at the time of release.

Davila apologized to the family in a brief statement.

“I would like to show my deepest apologies … for all that I have done,” he said. “There is nothing I can say or do that would alleviate any of the pain or hurt that my actions have caused.”